Delving into History…

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Stumbling Through History Links

Stumbling Through History Links is for anyone researching Australian history. Researchers are always working on a tight or non-existent budget so all the links listed here are for resources that are free. Many of these resources I have found and used in my own research.

If you would like to report a broken link or suggest a great Australian history resource that you have found, please fill in this form so I can update this list. Given the limitations of this page I can’t add every archive and history society. The ones that are listed here have have good online resources and/or may house excellent collections. They are devoid of lurid colour schemes and flashing stars (shudder). Having said that, there are clearly some gaps in this collection. Contact me if you can help to fill the gaps.

!Recently Added!

When I add a new resource on this page I’ll feature it in this section for a while so that you can easily see when this page has been updated. I try to post and tweet new links on Sundays or Mondays. Thank you readers for all your contributions. There are now over 200 links to great Australian history resources in Stumbling Through History Links!

9/10/2016: This week’s update is all about statistics. Year books published by governments have a wealth of interesting historical information. The topics that governments chose to collect statistics on in the past reveal a lot about attitudes of the time. Now these year books are available to us in pdf files. There are many tables which would be more useful in a spreadsheet. Follow these instructions from The Economics Network to convert pdf tables into Excel.

Chinese Australia

Digital History

If you want to know about digital history head over to my digital humanities blog, Stumbling Through the Future for posts suitable for beginners getting started. Also check useful digital history links on the right hand side column of that blog.

Welsh Newspapers Online – Don’t you love countries who freely share their historical sources with the whole world? Newspapers from the nineteenth century to 1910 and some WWI period.

Ireland

These websites relate to the entire island of Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Catholic Parish Registers of Ireland – digitised records of baptisms and marriages from the majority of Catholic parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 1880 from the National Library of Ireland.

Journals & Books – Open Access

There is a wealth of information in academic and literary journals but many are subscription only. Australians who want to access these should join their State Library or the National Library of Australia. With an Australian state or national library card you can then access many of these journals for free.

Wherever you are in the world it is also a good idea to check the online repositories of universities. Every university (I think) has an online repository of articles and theses written by their academics and postgraduate students.

Aside from this there are also some useful open access journals and books that you can access:

Inside History – The website of the Inside History magazine has interesting articles and links which you can access for free. The magazine has well written articles for the general reader on a wide range of Australian and New Zealand history.

Media International Australia – journal of scholarly research and reviews about media, telecommunications and cultural industries, policies and practices, primarily focused on Australia and New Zealand

Media International Australia – journal of scholarly research and reviews about media, telecommunications and cultural industries, policies and practices, primarily focused on Australia and New Zealand

Trove – A gift to the world, this website by the libraries of Australia has a huge number of digitised newspapers, one place to search the books held by most of the libraries in Australia, historic photos, diaries, letters and more. It is all available for free!

War History

Australian War Memorial – photos, unit diaries, memorabilia, articles about Australia’s participation in external conflicts. Nothing about the conflicts between settlers and Australia’s indigenous peoples.

Search Australian war service records – Most of the official war service records to the end of WWII have been digitised. This National Archives of Australia facility is free and easy to access from home.

WWI Link – An Inside History resource listing the myriad WWI history projects undertaken during the centenary

World War II

Vietnam War

Australia’s Vietnam War – This link was contributed by Tessa Wooldridge, who says it is “especially good for teachers and students as it incorporates many interactive features”. Many new resources will be added to this site in May 2016.

Australian War Memorial – photos, unit diaries, memorabilia, articles about Australia’s participation in external conflicts. Nothing about the conflicts between settlers and Australia’s indigenous peoples.

data.gov.au: I typed in the word ‘history’ and found 934 sets of historical data. Use these spreadsheets and other data forms to quickly sift through the descriptions of thousands of historic photos, documents, maps and other sources held by our cultural institutions.

Trove – A gift to the world, this website by the libraries of Australia has a huge number of digitised newspapers, one place to search the books held by most of the libraries in Australia, historic photos and more. It is all available for free!

Year Book Australia from the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Click on the “Past and Future Releases” tab and download any of these statistical overviews since 1908.

Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archives: This extensive site from Macquarie University brings together a number of projects focusing on the transcription of the archives of the Macquaries as well as helpful background information. Images of the original documents do not seem to be available (Please correct me if I am wrong).

Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV) Wiki: A wealth of information about the records at PROV. This wiki is now closed for new entries as PROV is hoping to migrate this facility to a new integrated website sometime in the next couple of years.